Abstract
The significant positive impacts of a marketplace inclusion stance on the financial and social performance of organizations and nations as a whole are well documented (see Lteif et al. [2025] for organizational examples and Fair4AllFinance [2025] and Portulans Institute [2020] for national examples). Yet, achieving this stance in practice remains a challenge. Organizations continue to largely overlook multiple consumers and communities as valued marketplace constituents in the development and execution of products, services, environments, communications, and other marketing outputs, at times even when acting with inclusive intentions. This commentary contributes a roadmap for embedding marketplace inclusion lens into PESTEL—a mnemonic depicting a foundational framework for systematic analysis of market macroenvironmental forces (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, and Legal) that serves as a starting point of any marketing strategy development process.
Academic and gray research alike attributes “marketplace inclusion myopia” to marketing decisions made with lacking or incomplete knowledge and stereotypical assumptions regarding many dimensions of consumer sociocultural identities, knowledge, perspectives, and lived experiences of navigating the marketplace and societal power dynamics 1 (LaBarge and Block 2025; Lteif et al. 2025; Rude 2025; Valuable 500 2024). But what drives the persistence of incomplete knowledge and assumptions in decision-making irrespective of mounting evidence and advancement of marketplace inclusion-facilitating frameworks?
We argue that at the core of marketplace inclusion myopia lies the lack of integration of marketplace inclusion insights and best practices with PESTEL-facilitated market environment analysis. In the remainder of this commentary, we (1) demonstrate the value of leveraging PESTEL for marketplace inclusion insight given its prominent presence in marketing and management practice and education, (2) outline its current limitations that inhibit the use of a marketplace inclusion outlook in early stages of marketing innovation and decision-making, (3) offer a template for embedding a marketplace inclusion lens into PESTEL-informed market analysis, and (4) recommend industry and education actions and policies for facilitating widespread adoption of this improved approach.
PESTEL facilitates systematic, iterative analysis (or scanning) of markets’ macroenvironment for strategic decisions (Harris and Brooker 2025). Scanning is necessary because the relationship between organizations and environments encompasses an ongoing process of adaptation through which organizations seek to reach optimal alignment with the characteristics and demands of their environments. Marketing decisions, particularly innovations in marketing strategy, play a key role in this interrelationship by translating market insights for product, service, and communications development and other market-facing organizational outputs.
PESTEL, sometimes also denoted as PESTLE, is a revised version of a framework comprising the first four characters in varying sequences (referred to as ETSP, PEST, or STEP analysis) developed in late 1960s (see Harris and Brooker [2025] for full history). Both four- and six-force variants continue to be applied widely to inform best-practices guidance and higher and professional education in marketing, and consultancy on market analysis. Although later iterations of the framework exist (see Table 1), PEST(EL) overwhelmingly dominates in industry and policy domain, as our assessment of six countries in both Western and non-Western hemispheres, summarized in Table 2, demonstrates.
Definitions of Market Macroenvironmental Forces in the PEST(EL) Framework and Its Iterations.
Added forces are shown in bold and italics.
Summary of PEST(EL) Presence in Marketing Practice Guidance in the United States, United Kingdom, China, Italy, Turkey, and Ukraine.
Notes: We assessed PEST(EL) presence via a series of online keyword searches. Our search protocol was as follows: All searches were conducted on Google as the most used platform in the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Turkey, and Ukraine; for China, searches were conducted on Google and Baidu, the largest local search engine, as Google is not available to local users. All searches utilized the following keyword combinations: (1) “how to analyze market external environment,” (2) “external market environment analysis,” and (3) “macro environment of a firm/organization.” For each keyword search, the first 20 results were recorded. We also recorded AI-generated summaries; all of these returned PEST(EL) as a recommendation. Full records of search returns are available from the corresponding author on request.
We observe similar prominence of PEST(EL) in the higher education domain, although less explicitly. That is, marketing textbooks utilized by the authors of this commentary for teaching both undergraduate and postgraduate (master’s and MBA) courses list forces under the terms “macroenvironment” or “macroenvironmental analysis” within sections that discuss understanding the market without direct reference to PEST(EL), or explicitly draw on PEST(EL) when explaining the market macroenvironment analysis process. 2 In contrast, industry and policy guidance and training, including by AI-powered platforms, more often explicitly recommend PEST(EL) as a guiding framework for market analysis (see Table 2).
PEST(EL)'s prominence across marketing practice and education indicates its achievement of a “mythical” status, that is, an evolution of a particular perspective or approach into a norm guiding disciplinary conduct (Kipnis et al. 2021). We submit that, as presently defined, PEST(EL) conditions those undertaking marketing innovation and engaging in decision-making to adopt an analytical perspective omitting the differential impact of macroenvironmental forces on different consumers and communities and the information that illuminates the value creation potential of marketplace inclusion.
A review of definitions of the individual forces delineated in PEST(EL) (Table 1) reveals that definitional emphasis is placed on the effects of each force on organizations and industries, while insufficient attention is given to their effects on consumers and communities, including indicators empirically linked to exclusion and to stereotyped and dehumanizing perspectives on consumers. Furthermore, analytical blind spots regarding the forces’ impacts on consumers lead to omissions in understanding how these effects shape consumers’ ability and willingness to engage (or not) with organizations or brands, particularly when those entities address them inclusively (or not).
For example, definitions of the “Economic” force direct attention to how indicators such as minimum wage, wage rates, credit availability, working hours, and unemployment shape consumer demand, but overlook consumers’ lived experiences (such as living in poverty or debt). Similarly, definitions of the “Social” (also referred to as “Sociological” or “Sociocultural”) force emphasize how indicators such as cultural norms, age distribution, and health consciousness influence purchase decisions, yet fail to capture the diversity in marketplace acceptance, autonomy, and authenticity experienced by consumers (Lteif et al. 2025).
Finally, PEST(EL)'s application guidance does not typically recommend intersecting the forces to examine differences in consumers’ lived experiences, thereby perpetuating stereotypical assumptions. For example, Rude (2025) argues that many businesses continue to commonly generalize consumers aged 60 and over as inflexible and resistant to technology, thus excluding them from consideration in the development of technologically innovative products and services, despite evidence of these consumers adopting technologies reflected within the “Social” force. In a similar vein, the ongoing war following Russia's invasion of Ukraine provides a recent illustration of the marketplace inclusion dynamics that become visible only at the intersection of the “Political” and “Social” forces. In the context of consumption, this intersection spotlights abrupt changes in access to and expectations of marketplace resources and heightened susceptibility to communications-induced trauma for large numbers of consumers (Shultz, Rosa, and Malter 2025; Su et al. 2022).
Some attempts to nuance the analysis facilitated by PEST(EL) have been made, as Tables 1 and 2 show. Yet later iterations are significantly less widespread and seldom revisit the framework overall. Rather, they delineate additional forces while continuing to provide broad definitions focused on organizational impact without encouraging consideration of the forces’ impacts on consumers and intersectional force analysis (see Table 1).
We argue that scaling up awareness and understanding of marketplace inclusion's value for superior organizational and national performance can be best achieved by embedding a marketplace inclusion lens within PESTEL. Doing so will leverage PESTEL's wide reach, while addressing its current limitations. To this end, we offer a template for PESTEL analysis with a marketplace inclusion lens (Figure 1) designed to illuminate differential macroenvironmental impacts on the lived experiences of diverse consumers and communities. The template introduces diagnostic prompts for each PESTEL force, requiring analysts to consider whether individual consumers and communities are (dis)advantaged, (mis)represented, made vulnerable, or systematically excluded. Prompts are paired with indicators delineating types of information that analysts should seek and exemplifying strategic decision-making shifts that can be facilitated via inclusion-embedded PESTEL analysis.
Template for PESTEL Analysis with Marketplace Inclusion Lens.
By explicitly evaluating how macroenvironmental forces impact consumer lived experiences, marketing strategy can shift from prioritizing the most profitable and socioeconomically dominant market segments toward designing offerings that are accessible and beneficial to all, including disadvantaged communities. For instance, it can overcome the conventional PESTEL practice of treating age as a monolithic demographic indicator, which results in stereotypical assumptions, as exemplified previously for older consumers stereotyped as inherently technology-averse. By contrast, an inclusion-embedded approach asks whether a technology is truly functional across all user groups and who might feel stigmatized or excluded by current offerings. This shifts strategic decision-making from a narrow focus on tech-savvy generations toward embedding accessibility and digital literacy into the design of products and services as value-creating features that actively expand the addressable market.
We stress that our template is only a starting point for leveraging PESTEL. The roadmap we envisage for further scaling of this approach requires collective action and collaboration by professional associations, organization- and agency-based professionals, professional and higher education bodies, and individual educators and researchers. Professional associations (for research and practice, as well as for accreditation and quality assurance for education) can recommend, monitor, and facilitate refinement of inclusion-embedded PESTEL by amending guidance to members and via knowledge exchange forums for dissemination of best practices. Organizations and agencies can utilize inclusion-embedded PESTEL alongside their corporate social responsibility strategies and their environmental, social, and governance reporting to inform the development of new offerings and communications. Education bodies can adopt inclusion-embedded PESTEL and support educators in developing additional educational materials for teaching and professional guidance on macroenvironmental scanning with a marketplace inclusion lens. These materials could inform the update of current marketing textbooks and professional training to instill the use of inclusion-embedded PESTEL in prospective marketing practitioners. Researchers can evaluate the effects of inclusion-embedded PESTEL analysis on marketing strategy and consumer outcomes.
We strongly believe that achieving recognition of marketplace inclusion as a performance imperative can be enhanced through integration of an inclusion lens within frameworks that have accumulated prominence across the marketing discipline, extending beyond academic research and higher education. Our roadmap for leveraging PESTEL is an initial contribution that offers a viable approach for extending market macroenvironment analysis to include the added value that adopting a marketplace inclusion stance creates.
Footnotes
Joint Editors in Chief
Jeremy Kees and Beth Vallen
Special Issue Editors
Samantha N.N. Cross, Rebeca Perren, Eileen Fischer, and Anders Gustafsson
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data Availability
No data were created or analyzed for this article.